Check Out “Lewnatic”
Born 1985 in San Francisco as Patrick Allan Lew, Patrick was raised in the Bay Area to a Chinese father and Japanese mother of mixed descent. He became a passionate fan of Grunge, Punk, J-ROCK, and American and British Classic Rock music as a child. His favorite bands growing up were Nirvana, The Rolling Stones, X Japan, Green Day, Guns N’ Roses, Motley Crue, The Beatles, Pearl Jam, Oasis, Silverchair, BEYOND, B’z, and Led Zeppelin.
He began playing guitar at the age of 13 and studied guitar and music composition at Vibo Music Center and California State University East Bay (B.A., 2011). While attending Raoul Wallenberg High School in San Francisco during the early 2000s, he formed what would become the first incarnation of the Patrick Lew Band (PLB) with his classmates. While a student in college in 2007, he began uploading online content on YouTube related to his music.
Patrick graduated from Raoul Wallenberg High School in 2004, and also graduated from Soko Gakuen Japanese School that same year.
By the early-to-mid 2000s, the Patrick Lew Band began putting their music online on many different websites. In 2005 at the tender young age of 19, the group was briefly signed to Statue Records. The group would relocate to Antioch, CA during the late 2000s, and would perform and record locally in Contra Costa County’s garage band circuit. After many false starts on-and-off, personal struggles, and a rotating line-up of sidemen and potential band members, the Patrick Lew Band briefly took a two-year break from making music by the end of 2012.
Patrick Lew Hayashi also played locally in other musical projects outside of the Patrick Lew Band: TheVerse (2015-2019), Pleasure Gallows (between mid-to-late 2018 until early 2019), and Crazy Loser in a Box! (2018 onward). He also made a brief uncredited cameo appearance on Season 4 and Episode 1 of the critically acclaimed Amazon TV series The Man in the High Castle as an extra.
In 2015, he officially introduced his fictitious relative Madeline Lew (his M2F cross-dressing alter-ego) as a virtual band member and mascot of the Patrick Lew Band. That same year, he also rebuilt and rebranded the Patrick Lew Band (PLB) as an Internet-based virtual rock band, performing live sporadically, but more focus on home recording and producing unique music that’s been described, “as a dynamic and anthemic fusion of classic rock, J-Pop, and grunge.” After Madeline’s arrival in the project, PLB began achieving exposure in the local music scene that long eluded them. By 2020, the Patrick Lew Band (PLB) became relatively prolific in the indie music community and on the Internet, as numerous press and bloggers began curating PLB and writing about them.
Madeline’s singing voice was created on VOCALOID and A.I. singing technology, whereas, her likeness is mainly created by Gender Swapping on very popular iPhone/Android smartphone apps, alongside Photoshopping.
The Patrick Lew Band has recorded 13 CDs as a prolific home recording act and as bedroom producers: Jump! Rattle! And Roll! (2006), Let It Rise and Against (2009), Murder Bay (2011), Angry Yellow (2012), Bubblegum Babylon (2015), Oakland (2017), Cold Sirens (2017), Immortality (2020), Codebreaker (2020), Rolling Thunder (2020), No Sleep Till San Francisco! (2021), Exclamation (2021), Adrenaline (2022), and the upcoming release Forbidden Door (2024).
The Patrick Lew Band was inducted in the Akademia Music Hall of Fame in September 2023. A few years earlier in 2019, Patrick adopted his mother’s maiden name Hayashi (林) legally into his name, and created a touring and live-streaming solo project as a musician under the stage-name LEWNATIC, touring Japan and performing live shows once-a-month at San Francisco’s historic DNA Lounge, until the COVID-19 pandemic happened a year later.
The band’s name Lewnatic is a spoonerism of Patrick’s father’s surname and “Lunatic.”
During 2021, Patrick and Madeline’s close friend Madoku Raye joined the band as an occasional lead singer and contributor. She made her first appearance on their 2022 album Adrenaline. Between 2020-22, the Patrick Lew Band was heavily active as an Internet-based rock band.
By 2022, he reactivated his solo project LEWNATIC and quickly began making music and live-streaming as a recording artist on social-media. By July that year, he signed with Bentley Records and quickly produced and released three mini-albums (EPs) during 2022 and 2023: Rapid Fire! (2022), Getcha Mood On Right (2023), and The Lost Souls (2023).
He rebranded LEWNATIC as a more simplified version of the Patrick Lew Band, and as the spin-off/offshoot band related to the PLB. Most of LEWNATIC’s music tends to be Instrumental Rock, with some lead vocals on Patrick’s behalf on selective songwriting ideas. In LEWNATIC, like with post-2015 era Patrick Lew Band, he plays most or all of the instruments on the studio recordings. Onstage, Patrick plays guitar, sings occasionally, and uses a laptop running all the backing tracks as musical and rhythmic arsenal, performing a setlist of his more recent classic output with the Patrick Lew Band and all his selective musical work with LEWNATIC.
During 2023, Lewnatic performed a few live-stream performances on Patrick’s YouTube channel. And also, performed and were interviewed extensively for Luke Sauer’s podcast at San Francisco’s Edge Studios streamed worldwide on Memorial Day. He is currently working on Lewnatic’s next album of all-new music titled STARCADE. He recently renewed his recording contract with Bentley Records in August that year.
Around late 2023, in spiteful response to his former girlfriends and his former friends (online and offline), he began dating his long-time girlfriend Amanda Kay again, and continued their relationship where they left off. Patrick Lew also reconnected with his long-time bandmate Madeline Lew from PLB, and regrouped the Patrick Lew Band going forward. In December 2023, Patrick was interviewed by Recording Artist Guild magazine.
Lewnatic currently remains a solo project for Patrick Lew Hayashi, as there are no other members onstage and in the home studio with him. Patrick Lew Hayashi boldly describes Lewnatic, “a one-man rock and roll machine.” The musical arrangements are very simple and straight-forward, Patrick plays guitar and occasionally raps/sings. And he handles the backing tracks and beats on his old laptop like a DJ.
The main motives for doing the band is to have fun, play heavy music and not take life and music in general so seriously. And the occasional punk rock show, whether it be a webcast or at the local dive bar! Expect more from the Sino-Japanese rock and roll pariah and icon himself. They’re not going anywhere any time soon!
Music Links
Apple Music: https://music.apple.com/us/artist/lewnatic/1478470593
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/7bBAEOueuwjLbBKD39q73a?si=UFcw1ME5TKi90T854npyuQ
Social Media
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lewnatic415/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ThePatrickLewBand/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@patricklewofficial
Linktree: https://linktr.ee/patricklewband
